Marcellus (PA) – update through June 2018

This is an older blog post, you will find one on more recent data here

This interactive presentation contains the latest gas (and a little oil) production data through June, from all 8,236 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing since 2010.

Gas production from these wells has hovered around a level of 16 Bcf/d in the first half of 2018. During this period, 351 horizontal wells started production versus 299 in the year before.

In the ‘Well quality’ tab, the production profiles of all these wells can be found, averaged by the year in which they started. If you group them by county instead (using the ‘Show wells by’ selection), you will see in the bottom graph that wells in 3 counties in the north east of Pennsylvania have the best average performance: Wyoming, Susquehanna and Sullivan.

The final tab (‘Top operators’) shows the output and location of the 5 leading operators in this area; Chesapeake, Cabot, Range Resources, EQT and Southwestern Energy. It also reveals that Chesapeake appears to follow a strategy to ramp up gas production before each winter, before letting it decline again.

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate Return” overview shows the relationship between gas production rates, and cumulative gas production, averaged for all horizontal wells that started producing in a certain quarter.

It shows that well productivity has steadily risen over time, and that there was a significant jump in performance in Q4 2016. Since then, the improvements have leveled off.

Later this week I plan to have a new update on the Permian, followed by one on the Eagle Ford early next week.

Production data is subject to revisions. For this presentation, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
• FracFocus.org

====BRIEF MANUAL====

The above presentations have many interactive features:

• You can click through the blocks on the top to see the slides.
• Each slide has filters that can be set, e.g. to select individual or groups of operators. You can first click “all” to deselect all items.
• You have to click the “apply” button at the bottom to enforce the changes. After that, click anywhere on the presentation.
• Tooltips are shown by just hovering the mouse over parts of the presentation.
• You can move the map around, and zoom in/out.
• By clicking on the legend you can highlight selected items.
• Note that filters have to be set for each tab separately.
• The operator who currently owns the well is designated by “operator (current)”. The operator who operated a well in a past month is designated by “operator (actual)”. This distinction is useful when the ownership of a well changed over time.
• If you have any questions on how to use the interactivity, or how to analyze specific questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Enno Peters

Enno Peters is General Manager at Novi, where he has build an AI-driven data & analytics platform tailored for oil & gas operators and energy investors. Prior to Novi, Enno founded ShaleProfile which was acquired by Novi late 2021.